On Wed, Oct 13, 2004 at 07:54:04AM -0700, Jason Evans wrote:
This brings up a question about documentation: as far as I know, I've read all of the available documentation regarding cyclic GC (the "Supporting cyclic garbage collection" section of "Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreter"), but those docs came nowhere near giving me an adequate understanding of the design rationale behind the cyclic GC. Did I overlook some documentation?
It's a pretty old document and perhaps a little out of date but here's something I wrote while working on the Python GC: http://arctrix.com/nas/python/gc/ Looking back, I realize that the constraints were pretty extreme which probably accounts for the unique implementation. A few off the top of my head: * binary compatible with previous version of Python * optional * small overhead for programs that don't create reference cycles * __del__ methods should still work Cheers, Neil